My idea for a Dragonball liveaction film

[Cipher]

This is MY idea for a Dragon Ball live-action film:

It is the year 2525. War has swept the planet, turning once-great civilizations into rubble. The people are frightened. America stands on the brink of destruction, the current administration maintaining infrastructure from a series of underground tunnels beneath the White House.

These are the circumstances Goku Jones was raised under. This is his world. And when Chinese emperor Chun-Lin proposes to grant one wish to the victor of his tournament and share his country's water supply with theirs, Goku's got to make the journey across the sea with the help of his friends. Armed with technology supplied by governor Kami and the bio-experiment Oolong, Goku has just ten days to get to the tournament grounds, seduce his childhood friend, Bulma, and disarm the seven Dragon Ball algorithms and stop the deadly warhead Chun-Lin plans to unleash during the distraction, codename: Kamehameha.

Time to hold onto your Dragon Balls. There's only one wish to be had, and this summer, it's going to be Goku's. Watch him grow from boy to man. He's going to make it his rules ... or die trying.

Pretty good, huh? For tone, you can think of it as something like a cross between Transformers and Eraserhead, but more realistic.

[tinlunlau]

Dragonball Evolution suffered due to FOX's intervention from making this a good film. Perhaps if FOX relied more on Asian film makers to handle the production while keeping the Hollywood funding, it would have been a more decent flick.

[Gaffer Tape]

This is MY idea for a Dragon Ball live-action film:

If it wasn't so long, I'd be sorely tempted to make that my sig. Never in my life has one so perfectly captured the essence of Dragon Ball into a simple, single-page film treatment. I shed a tear, tip my hat, and grab my Dragon Balls for you!

[Cipher]

If it wasn't so long, I'd be sorely tempted to make that my sig. Never in my life has one so perfectly captured the essence of Dragon Ball into a simple, single-page film treatment. I shed a tear, tip my hat, and grab my Dragon Balls for you!

Thanks, man. I was going to make a new thread for it, but I was worried people might not like Chun-Lin, my original fan character.

[Dr. Machismo]

People, please. I created this thread to discuss my idea, not a bunch of ones by everyone.

Didn't notice this last time. Yes, there have been and it is a staple of the martial arts film genre but there has to be more to it for it to be done well.

Obviously there would be a lot more to this movie. I just posted a rough outline of the plot.

Including fantasy has nothing to do with making it a better movie. As I said in my previous post, it is just what Dragon Ball is. A search for the balls or an alien invasion doesn't make a better movie either. There needs to be some type of substance which there is in the comic and can be in a movie. Dragon Ball has a pretty wide appeal and I don't think the general public is turned off by superhuman abilities, alien invasions, magic, and such

.

Honestly, I feel that creating a martial arts film with a ton of elements from the Strongest Under the Heavens tournaments is very much like Dragonball, which is what my idea is. There just isn't a better way to do a Dragonball film. And Dragonball wasn't really all that big on big on fantasy; it just had fantastical elements. The only times fantasy played a core role were the Piccolo and Majin arcs. The rest of the arcs were action, adventure, martial arts and science fiction.

[Avenged]

People, please. I created this thread to discuss my idea, not a bunch of ones by everyone.

Why not? Not everyone is going to agree with your idea and would like to discuss their own as well, I don't think we need a new thread for every single idea for a film.

[Dr. Machismo]

People, please. I created this thread to discuss my idea, not a bunch of ones by everyone.

Why not? Not everyone is going to agree with your idea and would like to discuss their own as well, I don't think we need a new thread for every single idea for a film.

Yes, not everyone would agree with it, and that's part of the discussion. But I guess there's no need for a new thread for every single idea.

[Son Satan]

This is MY idea for a Dragon Ball live-action film:

Why haven't they hired you yet?
I would pay all of my money for it.

[Son Geeko]

I would open up the film with Grandpa Gohan finding Goku in the space ship as a baby then do the rest of the origin story in the intro credits then have the movie deal with Nappa and Vegeta coming torwards to Earth. The Saiya-jin saga is the saga that most people remember and would easy to market if they market it as a big budget alien invasion summer blockbuster similar to Independence Day or Transformers.

As I've said before in an older thread:

I've always disagreed with the "If they make a live-action DB reboot, they should just start with the Saiyan Saga and just explain the earlier stuff in the opening credits" idea that I keep seeing getting mentioned over and over. I mean, it worked fine with The Incredible Hulk because many people had probably already seen the 2003 Ang Lee film and already basically know Hulk's origins (that and the 2008 film was really more of a "requel" if anything else). But for here, we're talking about fast forwarding a major part of the STORY here, not just skipping some famous superhero's origin like Spider-Man or Batman who origins story is already widely known. How exactly would they explain the entirely of Dragon Ball in opening credits time anyways?

"Hey, there's this boy named Goku. He meets some people. He looks for some magical balls. He kicks ass. He saves the world at some point. He grows up. He bangs a chick.... and that's pretty much it."

It worked okay with Kai, because it's an animated TV series that'll give the audience still some time to fully understand and appreciate the characters as the shows expands and goes on, but as a theatrical live-action movie that introduces the franchise to a even larger, wider, and (to put it simple) "dumber" audience? Not so much.

I'd really prefer that if a reboot ever happens, it should really start with DB just for the sakes of giving more time to better introduce and understand the characters from that point of the story. At least just have the first movie cover DB, and immediately follow DBZ in the second film.

[Son Geeko]

As for Dr. Machismo's concept for a live-action DB film....

I'm sorry, I don't mean to offend you when I say this but.... you're concept would not work AT ALL. If you're concept ever got green-lit, you'll just end up pissing off just as much fans in the same way they reacted to Evolution, probably even more. This is something that would be more reasonable and acceptable as some sort of alternative universe-ish Fan Fiction sort of thing, but as a fully realized, high budgeted, mainstream motion picture to possibly start off a possible big film franchise? Ehhhh.... most likely not.

Also, how would you continue after that? How would you handle all the Saiyan and Namek stuff and etc afterwards?

We start out with a young Goku taking a walk with his adoptive Grandfather, played by Jackie Chan, as he recalls his adventures from his younger days. He recalls the time he was a cop, lost his memory, and many more. Eventually, we just watch the final act of Drunken Master 2. By the time that's over, it's almost nightfall, Gohan says they should hurry home because there is a full moon tonight. Cue credits.

And I don't see this is Dragonball at all.

He was being sarcastic, obviously.

[Piccolo Daimao]

As long as it's narrated by Morgan Freeman, I don't care.

[In Brightest Day]

A gritty Christopher Nolan "grounded in reality" style Dragonball Z film would be hilariously bad. It's not even the ridiculous nature of the Dragonball world that would make it bad either. Nolan's films really delve into the characters themselves (which is why Man of Steel should be great) and at the end of the day, there just isn't much depth to Goku. Dragonball is ultimately a pretty lighthearted story as well so I just don't see it meshing well.

[NitroEX]

I think you're going in the wrong direction by abandoning any fantasy elements and trying to be realistic. In my opinion they need to do the opposite and embrace the fantasy element 100% because it will be like no other film out there and it's uniqueness will draw people in who aren't fans. Also I hate to break it to you but the film would need to be Dragonball Z because let's face it, the casual fan doesn't care about the story of Goku when he was a boy. A casual fan is more likely to remember Dragonball Z with the insane fights and the super saiyans and what not. Once you get people hooked with the good stuff they'll stick around to see more and THEN you'll get you're Dragonball prequel. Look at the Lord of the Rings, they got people into it with the insanely huge battles and now they're making The Hobbit which is supposed to be a prequel.

As for how I think the film should look they try should use the same style from 300 which tries to mimic a watercolour painted look but take away the sepia filter that 300 used. This would go great with the colourful costumes and would help make them look less goofy in live action. (Although you'de of course need to adapt the costumes and tone down the bright colours) The hardest part IMO would be the fights themselves because the level of destruction and special effects people would expect from a Dragonball Z film would require a huge budget similar to big superhero films like the Avengers which I don't think they would be willing to invest in.

[Kaboom]

My ideal live-action film adaptation of Dragon Ball would be your standard trilogy. Its tone would be more sci-fi than fantasy to fit with the Saiyans-Freeza story focus. Though obviously, central elements like the Dragon Balls themselves would require there to still be a healthy dose of magic and mysticism to the whole thing (Perhaps with that whole "magic and science are the same thing for us!" tone to it that Thor took).

The first movie would do the same things that Evolution tried but ultimately failed to do; tell the main characters' basic origins (or at least enough of those origins to get started), within an overall plot centered around acquiring and using the Dragon Balls, with Piccolo as the villain. Goku's Saiyan origins would only be hinted at, probably by Piccolo himself. The Red Ribbon Army would be mixed in, as the ones who worked to release Piccolo for their own goals but ultimately end up under he and his monster-spawn's command.

The second movie would center around the Saiyan invasion of Earth, focusing more this time around on Goku's alien heritage, with Vegeta as the main villain, Piccolo becoming an antihero on the road to redemption, and setting up Freeza as the big bad for the third film.

That third movie would be a heavily condensed and streamlined interpretation of the Namek arc. Goku, Piccolo, and Vegeta, all former enemies, would ultimately come together (along with others in the cast introduced over the course of the prior two films) to prevent Freeza from getting his hands on the "master" Dragon Balls on Planet Namek. It ultimately concludes with Goku becoming a Super Saiyan and defeating Freeza before supposedly perishing when the planet explodes around him.

A post-credits scene would show a small single-occupant space pod shooting away from the planet's debris, implying that Goku survived after all, and leaving things somewhat open-ended for a possible TV series spinoff about the Androids arc.

I had to force myself to not go into more detail lest I spend all afternoon typing up a description which ultimately snowballs into a mind-consuming stream of creative consciousness (it happened last time and I haven't recovered).

[In Brightest Day]

That actually sounds great, Kaboom. All it needs is a decent Director to get behind the project. With his history of doing really fantastic film adaptions of old fantasy tales, I don't think you could have a better person to take on the film (trilogy) than Peter Jackson, personally.

I know you said you don't want to go into more detail, but you wouldn't introduce Gohan if you had your way?

[Nex Carnifex]

I think Z would work better than pre-Z if we're going to follow the manga. Then just up the pace and make the fight scenes longer and more detailed and you can squeeze the Saiyan saga into an entertaining 2 hour ride that sets up the next movie starring Frieza. The first 10 minutes could be a really sped up version of the story before Raditz's arrival.

[caejones]

I was confused at first, then I realized that the last time I tried to post, the server freaked out.
... and now I don't feel like rewriting all of that, so instead...

... I kinda think Disney would do a better job at a DB live action Movie. (At least I would if I knew how much Disney buying Marvel had to do with how the Avengers turned out, but we have things like Pirates of the Caribbean if that doesn't count).

Because DB does not need a dark and gritty reboot, and I've read in a few places that the Avengers movie is seen (by who?) as proof that movies do not need to be darker and edgier to succeed in today's market.
(Of course, Avengers used a lot of solo movies to build up hype...)

... I also had a dream last night that in an attempted DB Live Action movie, Yamcha was lurking in thick vegetation to bandit people, and Bulma ran in there for "unknown" reasons and eventually an egg came out and somehow the quest for the dragonballs turned into an easter egg hunt...
... Then Tullece got stomped by the Hulk, and Baba and her counterparts from a couple other planets were chillin' at Enma's.

Strangely, this does incorporate elements from my DB Live Action Movie notes...

[Hellspawn28]

I think Z would work better than pre-Z if we're going to follow the manga. Then just up the pace and make the fight scenes longer and more detailed and you can squeeze the Saiyan saga into an entertaining 2 hour ride that sets up the next movie starring Freeza. The first 10 minutes could be a really sped up version of the story before Raditz's arrival.

It sounds like a good idea but I always see people saying that starting with Z won't work for a film. Seeing that DBZ came out in the US before the other saga of DB was released then they should not have a issue starting off with Z. Something like a intro credits of Goku's life can work.

[Son Geeko]

Seeing that DBZ came out in the US before the other saga of DB was released then they should not have a issue starting off with Z. Something like a intro credits of Goku's life can work.

Dude, did you EVER read or even notice my response towards that idea?

There's just so much that happens, with so many details and characters, we're not just fast-forwarding something minor like a character's origins or some small simple backstory, we're talking about skipping a HUGE chuck of the story here. DB itself isn't a prequel that was made afterwards and Z was the main story all along. It's the beginning, the first chapter that would eventually evolve into something much, much bigger later on.

How would you explain and showcase stuff like the whole Piccolo ordeal or characters like Tien and Krillin without making things in anyway confusing/unclear?

[Nex Carnifex]

Seeing that DBZ came out in the US before the other saga of DB was released then they should not have a issue starting off with Z. Something like a intro credits of Goku's life can work.

Dude, did you EVER read or even notice my response towards that idea?

There's just so much that happens, with so many details and characters, we're not just fast-forwarding something minor like a character's origins or some small simple backstory, we're talking about skipping a HUGE chuck of the story here. DB itself isn't a prequel that was made afterwards and Z was the main story all along. It's the beginning, the first chapter that would eventually evolve into something much, much bigger later on.

How would you explain and showcase stuff like the whole Piccolo ordeal or characters like Tenshinhan and Krillin without making things in anyway confusing/unclear?

When I first watched Z I caught on pretty quickly to what was going on, the Pre-Z takes to long to get down to business with the dramatic action its more suited for a comic.